houses occupied the slopes. It looked both foreign and familiar at the same time.
Several miles from the city, the
“We can’t dock at the shipyard,” he said. “Not if Phipps has gotten word out about us and what the
They came down in a weed-filled pasture surrounded by a scraggly hedge on three sides and a stand of trees on the fourth. Near the stand of trees were a small stone farmhouse and a large stable, both half in ruin. Kemp, Dr. Clef, and Feng emerged from below to see what was going on. Sunlight gleamed on Dr. Clef’s brass goggles, and he pushed them up on his forehead.
“Cut power to twenty percent, Alice,” Gavin ordered.
Alice leaned over the generator and restricted the flow of air and paraffin oil. The machine responded to her precise touch, and she thought about opening it up to poke around inside. Alice wasn’t a clockworker, but she was startlingly talented with the machines clockworkers created. Usually, only a clockworker could create and maintain the fantastic steam-driven inventions that let Britain and China dominate the world. In her short time with the Third Ward, Alice had encountered a number of mind-bending inventions that frightened her out of her wits. Weightless metal and walking trees were just the beginning.
Normal people were able to reproduce a few clockwork innovations—Babbage engines that allowed machines to retain information and appear to think. Tempered glass that let airmen create weapons that wouldn’t spark amid dangerous hydrogen. Designs for dirigibles. Electric light. But the vast majority of clockworker inventions were so complicated, so complex, that only clockworkers could create them, and their work seemed limited only by the materials they could afford. Normal humans couldn’t assemble the materials, even with careful diagrams or instructions. Even taking most inventions apart without breaking them was nearly impossible.
Alice, however, seemed to be unique in the clockwork world. She alone could understand, assemble, and repair clockwork inventions. She had, for example, assembled Click and Kemp with instructions from Aunt Edwina, along with over a dozen spiders and whirligigs, and could strip a clockwork machine to its component cogs in minutes, though this odd ability didn’t extend to the spider gauntlet currently gripping her left hand.
Alice had spent considerable time trying to pry it off, and with every tool at her disposal. It wouldn’t budge. She couldn’t even find a way to open it. It stoically wrapped her forearm and fingers, tipping her fingers with its claws and filling its tubules with her blood. It didn’t restrict her movements, and it left the underside of her hand uncovered, so she didn’t lose sensation, but she still found it… unsettling. It was always there, burbling to itself and dragging at her arm. The demon spider was a part of her now, and she a part of it. So far the demon did everything she required of it, except come off, but she wondered what would happen on the day her desires ran counter to its.
Under her ministrations, the generator’s power dropped and the envelope’s glow dimmed. The
“Perfect landing,” Feng said. “You are quite skilled.”
Gavin flashed the heart-stopping grin, then cast lines over the sides. “Let’s get to work. That barn—stable—is big enough to hide the ship in.”
Once the passengers, including Kemp, dropped to the ground, the ship rose a few feet. Everyone took a line and towed the ship toward the two-story stable, which was really little more than an empty shell. The ship barely squeezed through the gaping space left by the missing main doors, and the group lashed her in place at Gavin’s direction, then edged around her to get outside into the late-summer sunlight. Click looked down at them smugly from the stern, clearly pleased that he didn’t have to do any of the work.
“How did you know about this place?” Alice asked.
Gavin shuffled a little, momentarily looking like the teenager he technically was. “Sometimes the
“Smuggling?” Alice raised an eyebrow. “Mr. Ennock, I am shocked!”
“Well, Luxembourg has high tariffs on certain items that made it more expensive to ship them in than the goods were worth, and we couldn’t always be— Oh.” He caught sight of Alice’s expression. “You were joking.”
“The famous dry British wit,” Feng observed. “So much like my father’s.”
“Madam,” Kemp said, “I am afraid I have to report that the food stores are nearly empty. Breakfast this morning drained what little we had.”
“Then we’ll have to get more,” Alice said. “How far away are we from the city?”
“Less than five miles,” Gavin said. “A decent walk, though we might be able to beg a ride from a farm wagon or a carriage. Alice, I think you should change into skirts. A woman in trousers attracts attention.”
“I was thinking the same thing.” Alice sighed. “And, Kemp, you and Click will have to stay behind with the ship.”
“Madam!” Kemp huffed. “It is my duty to attend to Madam’s every need and comfort. I cannot do that when —”
“The Catholics have made you illegal in Luxembourg,” Alice said patiently. “Besides, the Third Ward is looking for a group that’s traveling with a mechanical servant and a clockwork cat.”
“Madam,” Kemp replied stiffly. On the ship above, Click put his ears back.
“No worrying,” Dr. Clef said. “I will also stay. I am working on a new piece, and the clicky kitty will keep me company.”
“What about food?” Gavin asked.
“There is sufficient for one person for a day or two,” Kemp said. “I said we had little, not none.”
Dr. Clef looked sly. “And it gives farms about, with fruit and vegetables in the fields. If you are gone for a few days, it matters nothing.”
